Opinion - Games Aren’t Film: Colonisation and Media Blindness

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How the selective coverage of games in mainstream media denies their most unique qualities.

By Tim Biggs

I present to you the next big thing in gaming: film.

Yes, after half a century of reaching for the stars, our little electronic amusements are “breaking new ground” with Hollywood-grade writing, presentation and performances. They’re “not just games any more” but singular works of art, and they’re ready to embrace their destiny as “the future of storytelling”.

If these quotes feel like they’re a little narrow or missing the point, it’s because I’m paraphrasing statements about the state of video games from mainstream media coverage of Beyond: Two Souls.

It’s hard not to notice that the further away a media outlet is from a dedicated games site (and so the closer it is to a ‘general interest’ or straight news outlet), the more a video game has to look, feel, sound or behave like traditional entertainment media to warrant coverage. What’s more, these games — most recently Beyond but there’ve been others including Skyrim, L.A. Noire and Heavy Rain — are generally represented as the height of the video game form, the ground-breaking or the ‘new’.

Beyond had its good points, but it's definitely not the height of the video game form.

They’re trumpeted as proof of how far the form has come on its inexorable march from digital plaything (or children’s pastime, or proxy social life for pimply-faced basement-dwelling teens; choose your cliché) toward legitimacy.

Of course these games are trumpeted thus much more for their similarity to works we have deemed worthwhile in the past than for their own entertainment merits (which it’s important to note are not always insubstantial), and even when a title is much more notable for its non-aesthetic features and gameplay (as is the case with Skyrim), it’s the graphics, performances and overwhelmingly the narrative that are pointed to.

So why is this a problem?

While it might seem that any mainstream coverage is indicative of the first steps towards acceptance by society in general of the video game as its own entertainment entity, it could also be viewed as an attempt to use games like Beyond to deny video games of their own unique aspects, implicitly linking ideas of visual composition, writing, and sound exclusively with the artistic and the worthwhile. It leaves the media and populace in general blind to what makes a game a game.

Was it the filmic aspects that made L.A. Noire great? Or the fact that you were in control?

In a way it recalls a situation in the early 2000s when, as more natural-born gamers came of age and game studies began to emerge as a new academic field, games had already become popular objects of study for cinema and literature academics unwilling to make room for a new discipline.

The resulting research, which tended to view games as a ‘new form’ or subset of existing media, was seen by some as an attempt to colonise and subsume the virgin ground of gaming for their own camp. By imposing accepted film and literature theories on the new form, there was very little room for discussing what games do that the existing media simply doesn’t.

Now, as games media becomes consumed by a larger and broader audience and competes for traffic with film and television, it’s clear to see journalists and outlets that have a long history in covering those forms involved in colonisation too, and the persistent attitude of denial towards the non-linear, non-aesthetic and ‘game’ aspects of the video game in media inform the way games are viewed and the way they are made.

Our acceptance of these attitudes sends a clear message that any game aiming to match or imitate the qualities of film and traditional art are worthwhile and valuable, whereas games that don’t are merely toys. Despite the length of time games have been around, and the huge numbers of people that play them, this all has the effect of keeping ‘gameness’ and game conventions firmly in their place of social taboo.

Merely a toy? Or one of the finest slices of game design this generation?

Why, for example, are the mechanics of what make a satisfying film or television show part of our common vocabulary, and yet the exact philosophies behind what makes game experiences satisfying are whispered only between game-makers and avid enthusiasts? Why are we so much more comfortable appreciating the older indicators of quality? (And yes I say ‘we’ to include the gaming community, who never pass up an opportunity to praise a particular game for its superior resolution or deride another for its simplistic visual style.)

Perhaps the bigger problem lies in the frequent characterisation of video games ‘as a medium’ that has grown steadily in complexity over the years and is now approaching a societal space similar to the one occupied by film, because the fact is video games aren’t really a single medium at all.

For all their differences it’s clear that Paranormal Activity, Bad Grandpa and Melancholia all belong to the same entertainment medium. They have the same linearity, the same level of user input. We consume them all the same way.

Is this also true of Beyond: Two Souls, The Simpsons: Tapped Out, Wii Fit U and Street Fighter IV? The single-media mindset that one might bring to a broad discussion of film is entirely the wrong tool to bring to any broad discussion of games, as there are many games for many purposes, in many forms. Only some of these could ever benefit from progress in the area of narrative or acting, and so filmic influences can never be ‘the next thing’. But that doesn’t stop them from dominating the conversation.

Oh man, this makes me want to play SSFIV so badly. (Play, not watch.)

As gamers we’re in the privileged position of being able to appreciate the forms appropriated from older media as well as the art of perfectly balanced character rosters and jump physics, yet we too often let the hype and value culture surrounding visuals and narrative guide us, and if there’s ever going to be a situation where people are completely comfortable regarding video games as something other than an extension of digital media, it certainly won’t happen until that bias dies down and we have a decent vocabulary for discussing a game’s ‘gameness’.

You could clearly never have a conversation coherent to the general populace on the satisfying loop of a game like Resogun, but what about a game like Device 6 on iOS, a title which uses the form and familiarity of literature to communicate its world and rules, yet delivers an experience completely unlike anything you could get in a book or film (something that cannot be said about a single playthrough of Beyond)?

What about a game like Sound Shapes, which blurs the lines between recorded and improvised media?

What about Guacamelee!, Divekick, The Wonderful 101 or Tearaway?

Do we truly believe that the only way to broaden the appeal of a game experience is to speak so directly to forms we as a society have already deemed artful, or can games do something completely unique to the medium and still be accessible and impressive to non-gamers?

As enthusiasts we can see how much some of the mainstream coverage misses the point. We know Hollywood actors and full performance capture doesn’t make for a game revolution and isn’t even particularly new (hell, Beyond isn’t even Willem Dafoe’s first appearance in a video game). But unless we can develop a relatable vocabulary around the aspects of video games that we do value, the cycle of publicity, success and development around Hollywood-style games will only make up more of the gaming landscape as our hobby expands.

Do you have any suggestions for how we can start to develop that vocabulary? Let us know in the comments.